BarbarousMexico JOHN KENNETH TURNER

20 BARBAROUS MEXICO
too great publicity—like police-protected gambling
houses in an American city, for example. These slave
sharks were mentioned to me by the henequen kings
themselves, cautiously by them, as a rule. Other old
residents of Yucatan explained their methods in detail.
I was curious to visit one of these brokers and talk with
him about purchasing a lot of slaves, but I was advised
against it and was told that they would not talk to a
foreigner until the latter had established himself in the
community and otherwise proved his good faith.
These men buy and sell slaves. And the planters buy
and sell slaves. I was offered slaves in lots of one up
by the planters. I was told that I could buy a man or
a woman, a boy or a girl, or a thousand of any of them,
to do with them exactly as I wished, that the police
would protect me in my possession of those, my fellow
beings. Slaves are not only used on the henequen plantations,
but in the city, as personal servants, as laborers,
as household drudges, as prostitutes. How many of
these persons there are in the city of Merida I do not
know, though I heard many stories of the absolute power
exercised over them. Certainly the number is several
thousand.
So we see that the debt element in Yucatan not only
does not palliate the condition of the slave, but rather
makes it harder. It increases his extremity, for while
it does not help him to climb out of his pit, it reaches
out its tentacles and drags down his brother, too. The
portion of the people of Yucatan who are born free
possess no "inalienable right" to their freedom. They
are free only by virtue of their being prosperous. Let
a family, however virtuous, however worthy, however
cultivated, fall into misfortune, let the parents fall into
debt and be unable to pay the debt, and the whole family